Tips & Tricks Friday - 02/06/2009

Today's tip is about communications, specifically offline or out-of-world communications.

My best recommendation to you is to set up a gmail account for your avatar.  This is a simple process, and very effective since your avatar name probably isn't being used by someone else with a gmail account.

1.  Creating an avatar e-mail address.

Go to gmail and click "Sign up for Gmail" in the lower right hand corner.  You can use your avatar name as your first and last name, and then use your avatar name as your login name.  For instance, mine is anya.navarita (@gmail.com) and I have my first name as Anya and my last name as Navarita.  That way, when communications come to me via this e-mail address, I can still maintain my real life (RL) privacy.

Because this e-mail keeps your anonymity, you can even put it in your SL profile.  That way, your online friends can contact you at their convenience.

2.  Forwarding your avatar e-mail for easy retrieval.

Once you have set up your gmail account, you can either log in to it to retrieve your messages, or you can have the messages forwarded to your primary e-mail account.  The way to do this is to click on Settings in the upper right hand corner, then choose the tab marked "Forwarding and POP/IMAP". 

The easiest way to do this is in the first section.  Click the radio button next to "Forward a copy of incoming mail to _____________ and ___________________."  Fill in the first box with the e-mail address where you want the mail forwarded, and then choose your other option from the drop down menu.  (I keep a copy in the Gmail Inbox for reference purpose.).  Once you click "Save Changes" any e-mail sent to your new Gmail will forward to the e-mail address you specified.

3.  Responding to offline messages from e-mail.

Yes, it can be done, and it's simple, too!  Log in to your avatar e-mail and choose the message you want to respond to and just click "reply".  I delete everything out of the message box (reply quote, signature, etc) and start with a fresh screen for a response.  This will show up in the other avatar's IMs, but you will also show up as offline.  Good for when you want to respond but don't have SL available to you.  Normally you can respond to the message for a day or two before the reply-to becomes invalid.

Thanks to all my new followers.  I was happy to see I had a few when I logged in to post this morning.  I hope you are finding this information useful!